Adam Blatner

I think that’s the call of a Cardinal-bird. A walk on a late Spring morning, with Allee, who is recovering from an appendectomy. (It was done with one of those little ‘scopes that go in through the belly button.) Wow. In the olden days she would have had to stay in the hospital a couple of days, maybe even a week. She went home with me late that morning!

It’s two days later. This morning’s insight is that the birds are expressing God as best they can, and I am myth-making about God as best I can. Only I know that it’s myth-making, and I paused and thought about William James about a century ago writing “The Will to Believe.” I feel that now, because although I’m in part inclined to be a skeptic, my heart just won’t buy it. It’s not that I’m just giving into sentimentality or ego-attachment; it’s more that I’m intuitively opening to the all-ness, which includes not only stuff, but mind. Bird-song is aimed at attracting other birds and/or announcing territory, and it suggests a great invisible network of becoming-ness. The idea that these all are just chance events randomly assembled is an offensive affront to my deep intuition. I don’t feel obligated in the least to “believe,” but there’s an old hymn with the phrase, “I am persuaded.”

So I’ve decided to let go of my skepticism and relax back into an encompassing myth, one that works for me, that doesn’t overly assault my rational faculties. The cosmos is God expanding in this three-dimensional realm with one-dimension of forward-moving time. Okay, I’ll go with that for now. Thanks lil’ birds.